Russia's prime minister announces plans for a high-speed railway between Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a government order on Monday on the construction of a high-speed railway connecting Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg, designed to make the 220-kilometer (137-mile) trip in 70 minutes, instead of the current three and a half hours. The project, which is expected to wrap up in 2024 and to cost roughly 360 billion rubles ($5.8 billion), is supposed to become part of a future high-speed railway connecting Moscow and Beijing.

In 2013, Vladimir Putin announced plans to build a high-speed railway between Moscow and Kazan. The project fell through, however, when it turned out that developers wanted too much government assistance.